(Parliament,
Wednesday) :When
Dewan Rakyat resumed sitting at 10 am today, I stood up on a point of
order to demand explanation why the order for questions set out for
today’s 90-minute Question Time had been arbitrarily altered in the
last-minute against all parliamentary conventions, procedures and
practices to adjust to the Umno General Assembly starting today.

The order
for each day’s question time is circulated to MPs just before the
adjournment of Parliament the previous day. According to the Order Paper for
today which was circulated late last evening, the first two questions are:

Dato’ Dr.
Wan Azmi bin Wan Arrifin (Sik) to ask the Minister of Rural and Regional
Development to state the reason FELCRA rubber tappers are paid lowly if
compared to the current high price of rubber.

Datuk
Juslie bin Ajiro (Libaran) to ask the Minister of Internal Security to
state the factors to be considered in the appointment of a security guard.
The manner to determine whether the present guards are effective in their
work.

However, the
Order Paper for today was arbitrarily altered in the last-minute and these
first two questions disappeared from the amended Order Paper on the table of
every MP – and became the last two questions, viz. No. 23 and No. 24.

Just before
the Dewan Rakyat sitting at 10 am, I saw Dr. Wan Azmi rushing into
Parliament and when I asked why he was not at the Umno General Assembly, he
said his question was the first one today for Question Time and Parliament
was more important than the Umno General Assembly. Wan Azmi was right and I
commended him for it.

However,
when I found the arbitrary and unparliamentary alteration of the Order Paper
when Parliament resumed its meeting, I immediately stood up to protest.
Instead of getting help from Wan Azmi, the Umno MP for Sik proved his lack
of the courage of his conviction and intervened to claim that I was
wrong as his question was not No. 1 but officially No. 23.

That was why
I rebuked him that if he did not have the courage to stand up to protest
against what is wrong, arbitrary and unparliamentary like the last-minute
alteration of the Order Paper, although it affected him directly, he should
at least keep quiet to allow others to speak up on the issue instead of
acting cowardly to defend such an improper and unparliamentary practice.

I also
reprimanded the Gerakan MP for Puchong, Lau Yeng Peng for again acting as
“Gerakan Tripod No. 1 in Parliament”, always in the forefront among the
Barisan Nasional posse to harass DAP MPs in the House although in this
instance, his leader, Gerakan Deputy President and Penang Chief Minister,
Tan Sri Dr. Koh Tsu Koon had been openly humiliated and attacked at the
Umno Youth general assembly yesterday.

When I
raised the issue to the attention to the Deputy Speaker, Datuk Lim Si Cheng
who was in the Chair, I asked whether the arbitrary and unparliametnary
last-minute alteration of today’s Order Paper on the order of questions was
because Parliament was subservient and secondary to the Umno General
Assembly, and that if so, Parliament might as well be adjourned until the
Umno General Assembly is over.

I pointed
out the newspaper front-page headlines today on speeches at the Umno Youth
General Assembly yesterday about “Don’t play racial card”, but this had not
prevented the playing of the racial card at the Umno Youth general assembly
yesterday, with Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu, Tan Sri Dr. Koh Tsu Koon and Datuk
Ong Tee Kiat openly named as “opportunist politicians” in Barisan Nasional
and with Umno Youth leader and Education Minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin
Hussein – again wielding the kris - issuing the specific warning:

“We know who they
are. We know where they are and what they are saying. Umno Youth is ready to
face these opportunist politicians.

“We will not
compromise or give in when it comes to matters involving the future of the
country. We will make sure that these sort of leaders have no place in
Barisan Nasional.”

This caused me to
specifically ask in Parliament this morning, when drawing attention to the
arbitrary and unparliamentary last-minute alteration of the Order Paper on
the list of questions, whether that quote was a warning by Hishammuddin
that Umno Youth would
block Koh Tsu Koon and Ong Tee Kiat from becoming Federal Ministers?

A
pandemonium in the House ensued with even the Gerakan MP for Puchong joining
in the heckling by Barisan Nasional MPs because I was taking up the cudgels
on behalf of Tsu Koon and Tee Kiat.

In his
ruling, Deputy Speaker Lim Si Cheng conceded that there had been an improper
last-minute alteration of the Order Paper on the question list as compared
to the Order Paper circulated yesterday, promising to conduct an
investigation.